


Of Empty Seas and Fated Skies

by LadyOfTheSouthernIsles



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-07
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-05-03 11:08:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14567703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOfTheSouthernIsles/pseuds/LadyOfTheSouthernIsles
Summary: She gave our golden days of summer to Dionysian dreams...





	Of Empty Seas and Fated Skies

I.  
She gave our golden days of summer  
to Dionysian dreams,  
chasing phantom shards of sunlight  
as she fled the hand of Fate.         
  
        The sun was out and we were in  
        the Labyrinth in the kitchen,  
        searching small, dark cupboards  
        for the treasure she had hidden.  
  
Swallowed up in all her sorrows,  
swamped by soughing Acheron,  
she drank the Lethean waters,  
and forgot that we were there.  
  
        Bottled ichor, precious poison,  
        creeping shadow, smothering all;  
        in the Daedalean night  
        we tipped it down the sink.  
  
  
II.  
A wand’ring, cruel Odysseus,  
he sailed in winter’s gales,  
crashing like the heaving seas  
and pounding us like waves.     

        We walked his Heraclean tightrope  
        always looking down;  
        it was not all that surprising  
        that we tumbled to the ground.  
  
He was a harsh and Spartan stranger  
and his eyes looked straight through us;  
we children of the Antipodes  
were never quite enough.  
  
        Disappointment, disillusion,  
        shattered dreams and empty seas;  
        his compass roads led to the Styx,  
        to the Ferryman of Hades.  
  
  
III.  
We soared on wings of Icarus  
in amaranthine hours,  
spinning wildly in life’s slipstream  
as the days turned into years.  
  
        For all our lives together,  
        we were stuck on separate shores  
        as beneath our darkly fated skies  
        we corroded from inside.

 

* * *

 

 

_I preferred the old man when he was drunk_   
_and my mother when she wasn’t_   
_so half the time, on balance,_   
_I was happy,_   
_I suppose._


End file.
